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Master of Arts in English Didactics (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at
the Nova University of Lisbon/Portugal – 2012/2014) and Teacher-trainer at
Katyavala Bwila University/Angola, since 2011, having in charge curricular units
such as TEACHING PRACTICE, ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
METHODOLOGY and MORPHOSYNTAX.
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This paper was originally designed and presented for the accomplishment of the
requisites for the second assessment in the English Didactics Masters’ Seminar
«English Language Teaching Methodology II», under the supervision of Dra.
Vanessa Boutefeu in the scope of a Master’s Program in English Didactics the
author did, at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities/Nova University of
Lisbon, during the 2012/2013 school year.
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This work must be cited in the following way: TCHAKAMBA, Manuel
Tomás A. D. – " Integrating the Lexical Approach with Activities to Improve
Speaking and Speaking Skills in year 2 students of Nursing at the Faculty of
Medicine in Benguela ", English Didactics Assignment Series (May 2014),
Online available at https://pt.scribd.com.
ABSTRACT
As almost everyone would agree, most of interaction between people is done orally and
speaking and speaking skills are the tools more naturally used in communication. And
as such, teaching speaking in the classroom should be a compulsory part of every EFL
curriculum and needs to be addressed strategically. In this assignment, I discuss the
nature of speaking and speaking skills and how beneficial they are in
developing/improving learners' automaticity in communication. To do so, I integrate the
lexical approach with some practical activities in such a sequence that I believe to be
feasible for improving speaking skills with year 2 students of Nursing at the Faculty of
Medicine in Benguela. After research and having piloted the lesson plan in the coming
pages, it was concluded that Speaking is should be a considerable part of the syllabuses.
Particularly to the students under study who have to take care of patients and deal with
people from different culture and language as wells as with technical language and
electronic laboratory equipments, an acceptable ability to use English and speak it is
compulsory and if the teaching of speaking integrates the lexical approach the outcomes
may be more noticeable as students will need to learn and use chunks, patterns and
frequent words in their professional jargon
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INTRODUCTION
As almost everyone would agree, most of interaction between people is done orally and
speaking and speaking skills are the tools more naturally used in communication. And as
such, teaching speaking in the classroom should be a compulsory part of every EFL
curriculum and needs to be addressed strategically.
In this assignment, I discuss the nature of speaking and speaking skills and how
beneficial they are in developing/improving learners' automaticity in communication. To
do so, I integrate the lexical approach with some practical activities in such a sequence that
I believe to be feasible for improving speaking skills with year 2 students of Nursing at the
Faculty of Medicine in Benguela.
The assignment comprises of two sections. In the first section which refers to the
literature review, I talk about speaking and the subskills of speaking, the role of teaching
and assessing speaking in language learning, how the lexical approach can work for
speaking skills development, and a list of classroom speaking activities. In the second
section, which conforms to the factual contextualisation of the study, I describe the profile
and background of the intended target group for my study, discuss a bit about how
important addressing the speaking skills is for such learners, devise a series of activities
and tasks that could be applied for improving speaking skills with those learners, and in the
end briefly explain the rationale underlying the design and implementation of such tasks.
Considering that the learners in point have no learning materials specific to their
area of specialisation, with this assignment I aim at rehearsing an approach and tasks that
could be useful in developing/improving their language learning with a future prospect of
devising ESP materials that would reflect students’ real needs and provide them better
learning conditions that lead towards a more effective learning.
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SECTION ONE: The Nature of Speaking
Previous to tackling on the essential issues about the nature of speaking, let us reflect on
the following questions: what is speaking? What does it involve?
According to Lindsay and Knight (2006: 57), “speaking is a productive skill that involves
putting a message together, communicating the message, and interacting with other people.
From here, we can gather that speaking means communicating orally and that it is likely
the most suitable way through which people can interact, understand each other and
quickly assess communication effectiveness.
Lindsay and Knight (2007:60) state that speaking involves a range of subskills
learners need to develop: “producing connected speech, the ability to interact, talking
round gaps in their knowledge, speaking in a range of contexts, and balancing accuracy
and fluency”. It also involves reasonable mastery of pronunciation, vocabulary and
grammar and socio-cultural rules for transaction, interaction, turn-taking and the relative
roles of the participants.
Actually, there are many categories of speaking, also called subskills by some authors.
Below are some, I believe to be more relevant for this study.
Pronunciation: Is “the way sounds are produced, emphasising the way they are
perceived by the hearer” say Richards & Schmidt (2002:429). For example, if the
words ‘important’, 'English' and 'grateful' are transcribed as ['impɔ:tnt], [in'gliʃ] and
[grei'tiful] instead of [ɪm'pɔ:tnt], ['ingliʃ] and ['greitiful] they are said to be
pronounced incorrectly. So, pronunciation is clearly the main speaking subskill for
through intelligible pronunciation people can understand the others and make
themselves understood more effectively. Incorrect pronunciation often leads to mis-
comprehension and breakdown in communication.
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speakers; by individualised language laboratory work; by reading aloud phonetically
weighted textual material; by ear-training and phonetic drilling; […] by the use of
phonetically transcribed texts; explicit phonetic training [… etc.]” CEFR
(2001:153).
Fluency: Refers, says Lazaraton (2001:104), to “the ability to link units of speech
together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue
hesitation and natural language use” or to “the ability to articulate, to keep going,
and to cope when one lands in a dead end” CEFR (2001:128). Learners learn to
speak by speaking, i.e., they acquire speaking abilities as time goes, by receiving
significant input and practising the language freely. So, fluency is also one of the
main subskills of speaking as for a person to be able to interact and hold a
discussion they need to be reasonably fluent, and mainly in the classroom activities
to develop/improve speaking should be fluency based.
Spoken production and Spoken interaction: These are other important subskills of
speaking and they refer to the ability learners should develop to communicate. As
examples of spoken production we can name “prepared, long turns [and one's]
description of his/her academic field” (CEFR, 2001:179) whereas spoken
interaction involves “spontaneous, short turns, conversation, informal discussion,
goal-oriented cooperation” (CEFR, ibidem). What is interesting in interaction is that
interlocutors do the things cooperatively. “Each participant is both a speaker and a
listener; they construct the event together and share the right to influence the
outcomes – which can be both shared and individual” (Luoma, 2005: 20).
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1.2. Teaching and Assessing Speaking: why is it important?
However, there are countless reasons why speaking should be taught and
assessed. Speaking is the most natural language skill and a part of daily life (e.g.
expressing opinions, asking for more information, or requests, informing someone
about something, describing things, complaining about things, people, behaviour,
actions, etc.); it is the skill learners seem more interested to develop/improve; and as
Professor Boutefeu (2013:2) emphasises, speaking should be taught because it is “[…]
a useful and necessary skill for communicating, an enabling skill [and], a means to
develop other skills and language.” In addition, Lawtie (2004) says that we should
teach speaking skills in the classroom because speaking motivates learners to learn the
target language and is fundamental to human communication.
Actually, many language learners regard speaking as the most important skill
they can acquire, and they measure their progress in language learning in terms of
their ability to speak and interact in the target language. And as Lindsay and Knight
(2007:57) state we teach speaking for learners to socialize with people, to do
something for someone or request someone to do something for them, to respond to
someone else’s call, to talk about their feelings and opinions about a fact or
predictable events, etc.
Luoma (2005:1) states that “speaking skills are an important part of the
curriculum in language teaching, and this makes them an important object of
assessment as well. And despite “assessing speaking is challenging […] because there
are so many factors that influence our impression of how well someone can speak a
language, and because we expect test scores to be accurate, just and appropriate for
our purpose” (Luoma, op. cit.), teachers and examiners should ensure a reliable and
valid speaking assessment. As speaking is the skill that more naturally drives learners
into the motivation of learning a language, spoken production and interaction should
be a crucial part of language learning and assessment.
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1.2.1. Correcting spoken errors
Should spoken errors actually be corrected? Why, how and when?
Despite the fact that error correction, specially overcorrection, can make
students self-conscious and discourage them from speaking as we can see in the
extract below, errors can be fossilised if not corrected. What is important, though, is
to balance between fluency and accuracy, says Harmer (2007:142).
Extract 1
Teacher: Where do you live, John?
Student: I live in Graça.
Teacher: What is your occupation?
Student: I am student.
Teacher: (writes the sentence on the board and risks it) It is wrong.
. You should say ‘I am a student’. Repeat!
Student: I am student, teacher.
Teacher: Use the article ‘a’, ‘a student’. Repeat!
Student: I a student.
. Source: Author’s data
Extract 2
Student 1: I stand up seven.
Teacher: Ok … I get up at seven o’clock?
Student 1: Ok, teacher! I get up at seven o’clock.
. (Pointing at a colleague) And you?
Student 2: I get up at six o’clock.
. Source: Author’s data
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Recording mistakes or errors, i.e., acting as observers, watching and
listening to students and taking notes to give feedback afterwards, Harmer (2007:146), as
to avoid breaking down the flow of the spoken production/interaction. This strategy is
good because it enables the teacher to note down all grammar, pronunciation, appropriacy
or other types of errors and at the end of the activity say how well learners have performed,
the errors they have made and devise follow-up improving exercises.
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fosters communicative skills and fluency, and enables learners to learn and use vocabulary
and grammar in context.
Drills
Richards and Schmidt (2002:170) define drills as classroom activities based on guided
repetition or exercise which teachers apply to practise sounds or sentence patterns in
language. In drills, Lindsay and Knight (2006:61) argue, the teacher has a rigorous control
over what learners perform and, in general, learners are expected to respond to the teacher
or partners correctly and according to a certain pattern. However, in a speaking lesson,
drills can be used in lead-in and language focus stages for the practice of lexical items and
chunks, pronunciation and new structures for expressing language functions. Drills are also
suitable for large heterogeneous classes and can work as good warm up tasks to provide
learners things to say and develop confidence, mainly for getting beginners to try to speak.
Dialogue
Information-gap Activities
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information gap-activities include finding differences, asking for information, asking for
and giving directions and exchanging personal information.
As defined by Snow (2007:112), “role plays are a form of pair [and also small-group]
practice that allow students freedom to play, improvise and create.” Analogously, Doff
(1988:232) defines role play as an activity through which we bring real life situations
into the classroom, by asking students to imagine a role and a situation where they
improvise language to communicate. Simulation and role play differ in that simulations
are more elaborate and create a more realistic environment. Generally, learners receive
role cards, as in the example below.
Extract 3
Role card A: You are a customer and you get into a shop to buy some products.
Role card B: You are a shop assistant and you see the customer puzzled.
. Source: Author’s data
Harmer (2007b:353) and Doff (1988:239) support that simulations and role plays
have a lot of advantages: they are entertaining and increase learners’ motivation; they
increase hesitant learners’ self-confidence to express their opinions in a forthright way
using gestures, intonation and language naturally; they provide learners a chance to use
language in new contexts and for new topics as if they were acting in the world outside;
and they are suitable for large heterogeneous classes.
Discussion Activities
Discussion activities are the most effective ways of getting learners involved in
communicative tasks. As Lindsay and Knight (2006:66) assure, they provide learners
opportunities to speak more freely and express themselves. This freedom to use
uncontrolled language to solve problems and talk about different situations gives
learners the chance to approach fluent language use. Below are some examples.
Picture describing and difference: Picture describing and picture difference are
simple but productive ways of getting beginners to speak (Ur, 1996:128). They
can be performed individually, in pairs, in small groups or even engaging the
whole class, in case of large heterogeneous classes. For example, the teacher can
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ask the learners to describe a person, their own classroom or houses, or a scene
from a picture or a real situation happening in the classroom or present similar
episodes for learners to find the differences. So the more description they make
the more they can activate and expand their vocabulary and grammar and
improve speaking.
This is the practical part of this assignment. Here the focus is on a critical analysis of my
teaching/learning context and devising activities that would meet learners’ language needs
in terms of developing/improving speaking skills.
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devising activities that would enable them improve speaking skills. The class is large
(nearly 40 students), heterogeneous and mixed-abilities. Presumably, they have had
English in their previous 5 years and despite this most of them have weak performance
and language background related to general English, and the average language level
according to the CEFR ranges from A1 to A2, for some approaching up to bands 3 to 4
of level B1.
Apart from all the reasons for teaching and assessing English explained in section 1.3
above, I think speaking is particularly important for these learners because they are
trained to take care of patients and during their intern-ship or actual practice they would
eventually often face patients who speak English only; because the language of
instructions in almost all their working tools, drugs manufacturing and drug
administration is English and obviously because much of the literature that exists about
medicine and nursing is in English and some are only available in English, basically
some useful words and expressions in the medical jargon. Speaking is also important for
these learners because through it they can explore and activate other language skills and
vocabulary.
Particularly with theses students who have English for Specific Purposes
(either professional or academic) the lexical approach has lots of implications and may
be a good source to practise and improve speaking. First, because it approach is
designed to fullfill learners’ characteristics and specific language needs as Jane Willis
suggests. And second, by focusing on tasks to notice and activate lexical items students
learn concordances and frequent words and expressions in their area of expertise more
obviously. So exposure to basic lexical notions of medical English, rather than
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grammar-focused instruction, will help them have more input and while they try to
recall and activate through interaction they will foster their speaking skills.
2.3. How could speaking and speaking skills be improved in the actual
research context?
Based on the theoretical description in the first section, I think the following sequence
of activities and tasks would be suitable for improving speaking and speaking skills.
STAGE 1: Warm-up
This activity has two tasks. In the first task, students are requested to work in pairs and
say anything that comes to their mind about getting and keeping fit, asking each other
follow up questions (e.g. Do you worry about being healthier? What do you do to
get/keep fit?). In task 2 , students also work in pairs but before sharing their viewpoints
they individually brainstorm on a given question – e.g. what contributes to a healthier
life? What should one do be keep healthier? The teacher writes some topic-related
expressions on the board and in trying to answer the questions, students are expected to
use lexical chunks such as a punishing diet, good nutrition, to get much sleep, the
practice of sports and physical exercises, seeing the doctor regularly, etc. The tasks in
this activity aim at enabling students to talk fearlessly as to activate the language they
already know, develop confidence and get motivated for the new lesson. This stage also
aims at introducing the students to the new topic overtly.
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activity is to keep students talk in the target language and develop fluency, without
worrying much about having the right answers or making mistakes.
In this activity there are two tasks. If electronic equipments are available the teacher
plays the audio track indicated on page 31, where six people talk about what they do to
cheer themselves up for the students to listen to or watch a video about obesity
epidemic, available online. If not, the teacher selects some sections of the article about
'great ways to well-being' available on pages 109-116 under which there is a short
glossary, preferably the sections entitled 'eat more curry', 'eat fish', 'drink water' and 'get
a hobby'. While they listen, watch or read they get focused to the contents and take
some simple notes.
In task 1, if the input was through listening/watching, the teacher presents some
gapped sentences for the students to complete with information from the track/video. If
they had to read the article, then the teacher assigns some questions to check
comprehension. The answers should be given in a spoken interaction.
In task 2, the students required to make a short summary and report to the class in
a free way everything they could get from the reading, listening or watching. Each
student should speak out at least three sentences.
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teacher introduces the notion of collocations, chunks, fixed and semi-fixed phrases by
writing on the board and gives some examples. He may also refer to the examples in the
previous tasks and show their lexical patterns, as in this table below and also present some
chuncks for giving advice, for example 'you should take …', 'you shouldn't do/eat/drink
much...', etc.
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STAGE 4: Feedback, post-speaking and extended practice
This activity has three tasks. In the first task the teacher gives feedback on the students'
discussion, asks the students what they liked about the activities. Then he spots some
errors and highlighting some lexical items that emerged during the discussion. The
objective of this task is to let students evaluate their work and realise their weaknesses
for further improvement.
In case time is enough, for task 2, the teacher calls for a short number of
volunteers to role play about giving advice for shorts periods of time. One of the
students will play the role of a doctor and other the role of a patient who is getting fatter
and fatter and needs a prescription to get fit. The aim in here is checking that the
students can continuously interact in English, learn from feedback and priming them for
extended practice.
In the last task, the teacher asks the students to concentrate again on the
suggestions for well-being in the article above and in pairs they decide on whether they
agree or disagree, stating their reasons for agreeing or disagreeing. After this the teacher
underlines the lexical items, chunks, collocations, etc., in some of the paragraphs of the
article and for homework asks the students to do the same with the remaining parts of
the article. The aims in this last task is to keep learners involved in the speaking cycle,
consolidate their understanding of lexical item and have input for extended practice
outside the classroom.
2.4. Rationale underlying the design and implementation of the speaking activities
in section 2.3.
The activities used in the section above are a critical reformulation of a lesson from
face2face advanced by Gillie Cunningham, Jan Bell & Chris Reston (a book used to
teach English as an optional subject to years 1 and 2 in the context under study). I
decided to focus on unit 3, section B – A happy, healthy life (pp. 29-31, 109, 112, 115-
116) – because I believed this topic is relevant for the students’ needs. It deals with
nutrition, diet and medical care, language for giving advice amongst other issues,
things that make part of every medicine practitioner. As such, I thought this topic could
be exploited in a more methodological way as to engage the learners and develop in
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them abilities for spoken production and interaction, discussion skills and
communication strategies.
Regarding the materials, I mostly used some of the materials in the course book,
with a fairly complete adaptation to suite best my purpose. In an actual lesson I would also
use some materials from Tony Grice (English for Nursing 1, unit 6) where I would retrieve
some material about nutrition and a spoken-based grammar exercise using should/shouldn't
for giving advice.
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Having discussed the literature underlying the teaching of speaking and demonstrated
basically how speaking and speaking skills could be improved, with particular reference
to nursing students at the Faculty of Medicine in Benguela, here are some concluding
remarks for reflection.
Speaking is a fundamental language skill and the most natural way people use to
communicate and express their feelings and thoughts. It is an enabling skill and
likely the most desired by students as they want to ensure they are able to
interact in the target language as the product of having learned it. So, teaching
and assessing speaking should be a considerable part of the syllabuses.
Particularly to the students under study who have to take care of patients and
deal with people from different culture and language as wells as with technical
language and electronic laboratory equipments, an acceptable ability to use
English and speak it is compulsory and if the teaching of speaking integrates the
lexical approach the outcomes may be more noticeable as students will need to
learn and use chunks, patterns and frequent words in their professional jargon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Boutefeu, V. M. B. (June 2013) 'Developing Speaking Skills', Powerpoint presentation
delivered in a seminar at FCSH-UNL, Lisbon.
Doff, A. (1988). Teach English: A training course for teachers. Cambridge: CUP
Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th edn). Longman
Lindsay,C. & P. Knight.(2006) Learning and Teaching English: A course for teachers.
OUP
Martin, D. (2003). Talk a Lot, Book 2, EFL Press: How to get your students speak 100%
English? Saitama, Japan. 1-10-19.
Richards, J. C., & R. Schmidt. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics (3rd edn). Longman: Pearson.
Ur, P. (2012). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and theory (2nd edn). CUP
APPENDIX I: Seven steps teachers need to succeed with simulation and role plays
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Distribute the roles: This can be done by writing down role cards or simply by
saying the roles, so that the characters know their roles – for lower level and less
confident learners the best way is to write role cards, including some words and
expressions they may need;
Brainstorm: Before starting the activity, let learners play in advance as a class to
predict what vocabulary, grammar or idiomatic expressions they will need;
Provide enough time to prepare: The more the learners prepare, the better they
may perform. Therefore, before they actually perform the task, let them plan
their ideas and select the language to use either individually, in pairs or in small
groups;
Allow learners to work at their own level: Because the class is of mixed abilities
and learners have different skills, they will not participate equally in the
interaction or all use efficiently the grammar and vocabulary the teacher has
taught. This is a good exercise for the teacher to assess what the learners already
know and what they still need to know;
Do linguistic follow-up: After the role play is over, the teacher should give
feedback on grammar, pronunciation and other problems aroused during the
tasks.
SOURCE: Adapted by the author from Burkart (1998:11) in ‘Spoken Language: What
it is and how to teach it’
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